Current Affairs

12/02/2011

Charcoal producers in rural Malawi understand that their work hurts the environment, but they argue that poverty leaves them little choice but to continue working in the industry. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

Daniel Chakunkha and Mussa Abu understand that what they do for money is detrimental to Malawi’s environment – but poverty has left them little choice in the matter.

“We are well aware of the effects of deforestation on the environment but we are forced by circumstances,” said Chakunkha.

“We are feeling the effects of these self inflicted injuries,” Abu added. “When we had enough vegetative cover, the soil was very fertile and strong because of the leaves and roots. Nowadays, our farmland has become useless.”

These men are charcoal producers; to earn money to feed their families, they fell trees and slowly heat the wood to turn it into the chalky lumps of biomass used for cooking across the country.

Charcoal is big business in Malawi. According to a 2007 report by the International Institute for Environment and Development, the industry employs upwards of 93,000 people and charcoal is used for cooking by 85 per cent of households surveyed.

But charcoal production is also a leading source of deforestation in Malawi, a densely-populated country where resource depletion is an increasingly-pressing concern.Chakunkha and Abu maintain that they do not want continue exacting such a toll on the environment; but they are poor and must do what they can to see that their incomes grow.

The two old men told me that last week, in a remote village called Makunje. Not so far away, in Durban, South Africa, similar arguments are being made by some of the most powerful men and women in the world.

Monday marked the opening of the 17th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (or if you’re on Twitter, just #COP17). More than 20,000 state delegates, lobbyists and scientists are meeting to negotiate resolutions and agreements around climate change.

As U.K. publication, the Guardian, paraphrased it, the International Energy Agency’s “most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure” recently warned that “the world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels.”

Yet despite such a dire pronouncement by the world's foremost authority on energy, it largely won’t be the environment that’s the focus of discussion among world leaders in Durban next week.

For years now, international talks on climate change have been locked in arguments between the world’s richest economies –including the United States, European Union, and Canada– and the world’s fastest growing economies –such as China, India, and Brazil– over who gets to pollute the most and why.

Largely left out of the debate are the world’s poorest nations, which are not only the countries least-equipped to deal with the impacts of climate change, but also those projected to be the worst-affected.

“(Malawi’s) total emissions are insignificant at the global level,” said Yanira Ntupanyama, director of Environmental Affairs, “and yet we do suffer from the consequential adverse effects of climate change that include intense rainfall, floods, droughts, dry spells, cold spells, strong winds, thunderstorms, landslides, hailstorms, mudslides and heat waves, among others.”

Ntupanyama described the link between climate change and extreme weather – which was recently confirmed a reality by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – as “a threat to the country’s socio-economic development, attainment of the goals in the Malawi Growth and Development Strategy, as well as the Millennium Development Goals.”

Speaking as she packed for her flight to Durban for the convention, Ntupanyama detailed a host of measures adopted by the Government of Malawi to minimizing the country’s contributions to greenhouse gases and prepare the nation for oncoming stresses associated with climate change.

For example, there is the Greenbelt Initiative, Ntupanyama said, which was designed to safeguard against climate change impacts like erratic rains and unexpected draughts. And the National Framework for Managing Climate Change, she continued, which is promoting adaptation and mitigation capacities, strengthening weather forecasting capabilities, and researching how to strengthen the management of climate change.

But there is always more work to be done. “We need to up-scale the effort, scope and modalities of funding to effectively manage the efforts of climate change,” Ntupanyama added.

11/08/2011

Like millions of people in Malawi, men working Blantyre's common food stalls are employed outside of the formal economy and often lack social security benefits such as pension plans. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

Two months ago, our neighbours here in Blantyre, Malawi, fired their night watchman. The man was in his late sixties and, we suspected, was going senile.

‘What will he do for money?’ I recall wondering. But the thought was soon forgotten.

Last week, however, the night guard’s fate returned to my conscience. Researching a story on social security in Malawi, I learned that in all likelihood, my neighbour’s former employee now lives in extreme poverty (defined by the World Bank as living on the equivalent of less than $1.50 U.S. a day).

Down a back road in Blantyre, a colleague and I found Enock Andaradi sifting through a pile of garbage, scavenging for anything that he could exchange for money or food.

“Life has been tough on me, especially lately because I am completely abandoned,” he told us.

Andaradi, 79, was also once a night guard. But he, too, was dismissed on account of his old age.

A few days later, Jonathan Mbenje told a similar story. Despite being 73-years-old, he was still working as a night guard, but expressed great anxiety for his future.

“For me to be working at this old age is not out of choice,” he said. “Being a guard, especially at this age, it is very dangerous.”

In Canada, these men could have paid into pension plans and now be living comfortably in retirement. But in Malawi and throughout much of Sub Saharan Africa —where, according to a comprehensive World Bank analysis, an average of 40 per cent of economic activity takes place outside the formal sector— such social services are largely out of reach.

In Malawi, there is legislation aimed at providing the basics of a welfare system.

The Employment Act, for example, includes provisions pertaining to a minimum wage, contract terminations, and severance pay. And there are sections in the act that state that employers must provide paid sick leave as well as full pay for women on maternity leave. In addition, the recently-amended Pension Bill sets the maximum retirement age at 70 and requires employers to pay 10 per cent of an employee’s wage into a pension fund.

However, according to a 2010 report by the International Labour Office in Geneva, 90 per cent of Malawians – more than 13 million people – work outside of the formal economy. And considering the extent to which significant segments of the population are fundamentally excluded from society due to poverty and inequality, the prestigious 2010 Ibrahim Index of African Governance gives Malawi a miserable score of two out of 10.

The Malawi government has attempted to extend social services to this large and vulnerable pool of labour.

Section 43 of the Employment Act refers to benefits for seasonal workers, and a 2010 amendment to the act reduced the qualifying period for long service benefits from 12 months to three. Furthermore, the 1996 Labour Relations Act provides for the formation of trade unions in the informal economy, and a group called the Malawi Union for the Informal Sector now exists.

Even still, an untold number of Malawians fall through these safety nets, which, as the situations of these night guards makes clear, remain porous.

A primary factor frustrating efforts to see casual labourers gain access to programs such as pensions is a lack of awareness.

Andaradi claimed that he has never heard of social services for the old and unemployed. “I do not know how the aged can be helped,” he lamented.

Another problem is the ineffectual state of Malawi law enforcement.

Mbenje is employed by a registered security company, and so upon leaving his job, he said he does expect to receive some form of monetary compensation to help ease him into retirement. But he complained that uneducated workers like him rarely get what they are owed.

“Most of the time, they give someone between K20,000 and K40,000 ($120-$240 U.S.),” Mbenje reported, noting that that would be a one-time payout, and not any sort of regular allowance.

“With that kind of money, you cannot survive; hence, I am still working at age 73.”

I stopped mid-step, shocked and stared wide-eyed at the gruesome photograph of the young man’s dead body splashed across the front page.

While the act of suicide in Malawi remains taboo, suicide cases are often smeared across the pages of the country’s newspaper. Tabloidization of a suicide victim’s family, personal details and the death are reported on without afterthought. Photographs and suicide letters are also printed.

Families and communities are often shamed after a death because of how the media reports on suicide, explained Kenneth Mtaso, executive Director of Young Voices, a community–based organization that works to protect and promote the rights of youth in Malawi.

Attempting and committing suicide is illegal in Malawi and is treated as a criminal offence rather than a social issue. Section 229 of the penal code states, “any person who attempts to kill himself shall be guilty of misdemeanour.”

This law brings further shame to families of those who try to take their own lives.

“If you are caught trying to kill yourself you go to prison. It can be a jail sentence between four and five years. The police look at the forces that contributed to your suicide and then decide the length,” said Mtaso. “However, this isn’t effective because most people will disregard all punishment to commit suicide.”

There are no definitive statistics or data on how many people commit suicide or attempt suicide and are jailed in Malawi; however, it is believed that the number is growing as the country faces more challenges, such as increasing levels of poverty.

With over 70 per cent of Malawians living on less then a dollar, poverty is an instigator that leads to suicide in Malawi. Poorer rural areas are more at risk for suicides, as there are greater cultural pressures and stigmatization to face there, explains Mtaso.

“In the villages people marry younger making them more susceptible to suicide. Also teen pregnancy is big factor in youth suicide,” said Mtaso. “Because of the stigma surrounding reproductive issues in Malawi, especially in rural areas, middle-aged women who are having trouble conceiving sometime commit suicide because of the pressures to have a baby.”

About 80 per cent of Malawi’s population lives in rural areas.

While there is less pressure on urban youth to marry and have children, alcohol and drugs leads to more youth suicides in Malawi’s major cities.

According to UNICEF, the adult HIV prevalence rate in Malawi in 2009 was 11 per cent, which also contributes to suicide in Malawi.

Young Voices has been offering advice for troubled youth, who are at risk of suicide in Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa since 1997.

“We try to emphasize that just because you live in poverty doesn’t mean it’s the end,” said Mtaso. “Young people have a responsibility to protect themselves and value life.”

10/24/2011

The topic of immunization is often controversial – but in Malawi, it can be deadly as parents refuse their children access to vaccines.

Two months ago, the online publication, Malawi Voice, reported that 131 children from Nsanje, Malawi’s most southern district were vaccinated at gunpoint.

These families had originally fled to Mozambique to “protect” their children from the anti-measles vaccination, but when they returned home, medical officials and police tracked down the children and forcefully vaccinated them.

It was reported that The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was behind the involuntary vaccinations. The foundation has been launching extensive campaigns to make sure all children are vaccinated against deadly diseases. When it comes to vaccines, Melinda Gates called Malawi one of the few countries “on track to reach the UN Millennium Development Goals.”

When contacted, the Gates Foundation and its partners in Malawi were unavailable for an interview.

In Malawi, the UN, NGOs and the Malawian Ministry of Health work together to ensure that all children are given shots for tuberculosis, polio, hepatitis and measles, as well as vitamins. The Health Ministry is currently carrying out a mass vaccination campaign, targeting six million vulnerable children under the age of 15 across Malawi.

“It is a requirement that all children are vaccinated, but it’s difficult to trace to see if a child has been vaccinated,” says David Chimwaza, a clinical officer at Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital in Blantyre.

Measles is the most common disease outbreak in Malawi.

Worldwide, 164,000 people, mostly children under the age of 5, die from measles. Even though effective immunization costs less than $1 U.S. and has been available for 40 years.Furthermore, each year more than 1.7 million children die of vaccine preventable diseases, according to WHO.

“During an outbreak everyone has to be vaccinated,” explains Chimwaza. “Officials will go into homes to inspect children to check if they were vaccinated.”

However, in rural communities this can prove difficult without proper record keeping and lack of resources.

Similarly, vaccinations can be controversial in Canada, but for different reasons.

Some Canadian parents believe that the measles, mumps, rubella (MMR) vaccine can be linked to autism or sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). Although, most doctors and scientists agree the benefits of immunizations that protect against infectious diseases outweigh the rare side effects of vaccines.

In addition to health concerns, some Malawian families are against vaccinations and Western medicine because their religion forbids it, such as the Seventh Day Apostolic Church. Members of the Seventh Day Apostolic Church who do receive medical care are excommunicated from the church.

A Malawian father, who follows the Seventh Day Apostolic faith, was sentenced to two years in prison after refusing to let his three children receive the measles vaccine due to his religious belief. Police believe that one of his children died from the illness.

In nearby Zimbabwe, the World Health Organization (WHO) issued a bulletin in 2009 stating that the majority of unvaccinated children belong to apostolic faith sects, 45 per cent and 23 per cent belong to the Pentecostal Church.

Muslim fundamentalists are also against immunization programs because vaccines can contain animals that have not been killed in accordance with ritual or can contain alcohol.

In some cases Muslim fundamentalists believe vaccines are used by the West to poison or sterilize followers of Islam.

“Usually because of religion, children do not receive vaccines. They have the idea that if you are sick God will help you - you don’t have to take drugs and medicines,” says Chimwaza.

As for the children who were vaccinated at gunpoint,he explains that both the measles outbreak and the need for its immediate containment were the cause for such an extreme response.

“The police had to vaccinate at gunpoint,” he says.“I think it was the first time that has happened.”

You are distraught, dealing with grief. One day, on top of all of the emotions and trials you are trying to overcome, your in-laws inform you that the place where you are living no longer belongs to you. They claim that having belonged to their son the house is theirs and they are there to take it.

Now not only have you lost your husband, you’ve also lost your home.

Interested in the magnitude of this problem, I was glad when some students at the Malawi Institute of Journalism involved in Neighborhood Watch, a radio program highlighting human rights issues in Blantyre and the surrounding communities, produced a segment on the topic. In North America this problem probably wouldn’t occur, and if it did, the property owner wouldn’t hesitate to sue.

As it turns out, property grabbing is a serious issue in Malawi and elsewhere in Africa. For the student contributors at Neighborhood Watch, finding a victim was relatively easy, as with increasing deaths related to HIV and AIDS, many women in Malawi are left widowed and vulnerable to property grabbing.

One such story comes from one Mrs. Msokho, a mother of five children who was recently widowed after 15 years of marriage. Soon after her husband’s death, his family showed up to lay claim to her property.

“After my husband died and the mourning period passed, my husband’s family came to tell me I could remarry as per our culture,” Mrs. Msokho said. “On the day they came, my brother-in-law told me that we should sell part of the land on which I was living.”

Mrs. Msokho’s mother-in-law justified her claims, “After the mourning period, I told my daughter-in-law that [she] should be assisting me because when my son was alive he was the one who was assisting me," she said.

Culturally, perpetrating families believe that widows - particularly those who are young - will have the opportunity to marry again. However, the prospect of marriage so soon after eviction is very slim and immediate needs for the family must be met, which can lead to prostitution. Children also bear the brunt of supporting the family, often as street children.

Equal right to property between the genders is enshrined in the core principles of Malawi’s constitution dealing with gender equality. Furthermore, the constitution recognizes that women have the right and are fully protected under the law “to acquire and maintain rights in property, independently or in association with others, regardless of their marital status.”

Sadly, because 50 per cent of Malawian women are illiterate, many women who are victims of property grabbing do not know what rights they have.

“During the discussion the police officer told my in-laws that the property which is acquired during a marriage between a man and woman belongs to the two of them,” Mrs. Msokho later said.

Inspector Horus Chabuka of the Victim Support Unit of the Blantyre Police explained that when such cases of property grabbing arise, police seek out a confrontation with both parties and attempt to provide counselling.

“We have to follow the procedures of dialogue,” Chabuka explained. “The widow and the husband planned what they have to do for the development of their family in that house.”

“People who have been grabbed of their property should not be afraid to come to police to sue the other party,” Chabuka advised, “We are there to protect them and the law is there to protect them.”

The greatest thing that Chabuka advises in matters that involve or could lead to property grabbing is consideration.

“I have to advise all parties that have dead relatives to think about the family that has been left behind,” Chabuka cautioned, “because they are the people directly involved in the development of the family.”

“I’ve grown tobacco for 25 years,” he said on the property he manages in Zomba District, Malawi, “and what happened this year has never happened in Malawi – it has forced us not to grow tobacco this season so we have stopped. We will never go back to tobacco.”

Strong words for a farm manager in a country that once relied on “green gold”, as is it commonly known in Malawi, for as much as 70 per cent of its exports and 15 per cent of its GDP. But Tambula is in good company for renouncing the crop.

For 2011, Malawi’s tobacco earnings are down 57 per cent from what they were the previous year. After five consecutive seasons of declining returns on tobacco, a combination of the global recession, oversaturated markets, and increasingly-popular anti-tobacco campaigns is forcing Malawian farmers to look to other crops.

According to Prince Kapondamgaga, executive director for the Farmers Union of Malawi, this is not bad news. “Diversification is long overdue,” he said.

A group of Canadians working in Malawi agrees.

Canadian Physicians for Aid Relief’s Putting Farmers First program has long supported food security in Sub-Saharan Africa. In an email sent from Toronto, Kevin O’Niell, a program officer with the group, wrote that CPAR builds on the strengths of small-scale farming communities by promoting conservation agriculture principles such as crop diversification.

“Crop diversification is one of a series of sustainable farming techniques at the core of CPAR's approach that improve crop production and expand opportunities for farmers to lead competitive agricultural production efforts,” he explained. “By moving away from mono-cropping (planting only one staple crop such as maize), small-scale farmers lessen their dependency on the success of that crop.”

What’s more, he continued, this strategy also helps to improve the nutritional content of household diets. As arable land previously used to grow maize and tobacco –the two most-common crops in Malawi– is cleared of those plants, more room is made available for healthier fruits and vegetables.

O’Niell maintained that for CPAR, these issues are very much a matter of human rights.

“People's right to food is driven by the notion that food should be accessible to all (sustained year-round access to a stable supply of food), available to all (a sufficient supply), adequate for all (nutritionally adequate and from a sustainable food system), and acceptable to all (culturally appropriate and respectful of traditions),” he wrote.

“Our work with small-scale farmers is based around these principles.”

A success story posted on CPAR’s website highlights how crop diversification is a means to achieving those goals.

It recounts how Harold, the head of a family of 10 living in the Lilongwe District, learned to diversify his crops in order to bolster food security.

“This training was an eye opener to me,” Harold is quoted as saying. “Through this training we learned the importance of growing different crops like cassava, sweet potato, vegetables and others throughout the year rather than just relying on rain fed maize production.”

With climate change altering rainfall patters, such stories are increasingly important to sustainable agriculture, CPAR maintains.

“In the face of dwindling natural resources and an ever-increasing demand for food due to high populations, crop diversification remains key to achieving food security,” it states on its website.

Back in Zomba District, Tambula toured his farm and pointed out more than a dozen different fruits and vegetables for which his fields have been prepared. But he noted that the transition will not be so easy for others in Malawi.

A reliance on mono-cropping holds the most risk for small-holder farmers, which, in Malawi’s case, account for 80 per cent of agricultural production in the country.

The company that Tambula works for, Mulli Brothers Limited, is large enough to recoup the money it lost on tobacco last year. “But the poor people in the village, the farmers there who grew tobacco, they bought fertilizers and also employed people to help them. And they are not going to be able to recover their money,” Tambula said. “Those people are even worse off. It is terrible. A disaster.”

09/21/2011

A mental health patient undergoing a medical check-up. Epilepsy, depression, schizophrenia and bipolar disorders are some of the top mental afflictions in Malawi. Photo by Blantyre News Limited.

By Elena Sosa Lerin and Lucas Bottoman

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), mental health problems are already the fourth leading cause of the global health burden, representing a third of all years of healthy life lost to disability among adults.

By 2020, they will rank second, behind heart disease.

In Africa, regional WHO studies show that mental health issues such as epilepsy, depression, psychosis, mental retardation, substance abuse, and other psychotic disorders, are among the top ten causes of disability in the region.

But in Malawi, one of the poorest countries in the world, where health policies and development goals are primarily centered on the prevention of HIV and AIDS, the reduction of maternal mortality, tuberculosis, and malaria, mental healthcare is - at best - an afterthought.

Case in point, the Ministry of Health has no solid data on the nature and the extent of those suffering mental illness.

Its National Mental Health Policy Plan admits that in the absence of research on mental health patients, it has had to rely on studies done in neighbouring countries.

Based on these studies, health officials estimate that at least 10 per cent of Malawi’s 15 million people are affected by a mental health problem, also meaning that mental health afflictions are as common as infectious diseases.

And yet, given these dire statistics, the Ministry of Health’s Strategic Plan for 2011-2016 recognizes that the government’s budget for the health sector is “inadequate.”

Health places third in budgetary allocation, (at 10.2 per cent) after education (13.7 per cent) and agriculture (18.9 per cent).

Less than two percent of the national health budget is spent on mental care.

In 2007 and 2009, respectively, Malawi signed and ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Principles for the Protection of Persons with Mental Illness and for the Improvement of Mental Health Care.

Among the guiding principles of this Convention are accessibility to facilities and services, the right to health, as well as habilitation and rehabilitation services and programs.

The Malawian Constitution addresses the right to development, declaring that the State commits itself to “take all necessary measures” to guarantee “access to basic resources, […and] health services.”

But with such a tight budget, intentions can only go so far.

Mental patients have to deal with public mental healthcare institutions that suffer chronic shortages of essential drugs, inadequate if not, deteriorating facilities, insufficient and overworked nurses and doctors, and no access to counseling.

For instance, the psychiatric section of the Queen Elizabeth Central Hospital (QECH), the largest hospital in the city of Blantyre, has been out of essential drugs, (like Chlorpromazine and Modecate, which are used in the treatment of conditions such as schizophrenia, psychoses and manic episodes) for over a year, while the one at the Bwaila Hospital in the capital, Lilongwe, has lacked medication for 10 months.

Based on hospital records, six out of 10 patients are relapsing due to the lack of drugs at QECH.

“There’s no hope for many patients,” says one of the psychiatric nurses from QECH. “It is a very sad situation to see – and we can’t do much about it.”

The little the nurses can do is to use substitute drugs if possible. But sometimes they have to turn patients away if there are not adequate drugs to treat their specific needs.

“We feel very sorry to tell the patients who have walked for many hours to get their medication that we don’t have any,” says another nurse from Bwaila Hospital.

As if the lack of essential drugs were not enough, there is also the issue of the scarcity of mental healthcare workers.

For instance, QECH has just one psychiatrist and 18 nurses to attend an average of 2700 patients a year. Bwaila Hospital does not even have a psychiatrist. It is entirely run by five nurses who attend about 200 patients every day.

Two years ago, Dr. Rob Stewart, the head of the psychiatric unit at QECH decided to shut down admissions of patients because the rooms lacked windows and toilets.

One of the nurses from QECH, when asked what improvements she’d like to see in the mental healthcare system, said having a computer would make a big difference, as patients’ records are still handwritten and usually get lost or mixed with other papers.

“The only piece of technology we have here is a telephone, “ she says.

09/02/2011

Employees of The Daily Times and other BP&P papers have been laid off as Malawi faces economic difficulties. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

“Dear brethren,” Leonard Chikadya, managing director of Blantyre Printing and Publishing, began the conclusion of a speech to staff on Aug. 30.

“With a lot of pain in my heart, I have swallowed my pride and, reluctantly, decided that I am going to reduce our head count. I am going to reduce the number of colleagues that we have by 44.”

Speaking for the leadership of the largest publishing house in Malawi, Chikadya’s words soon reverberated throughout the media environment of the entire country.

And they were not the only ones.

On the same day, the state-run Malawi Broadcasting Corporation announced that a significant round of layoffs would hit its ranks too. The following morning, just 418 remained of the 700 employees who comprised MBC the day before.

In a packed cafeteria at BP&P’s head office in Blantyre, Chikadya showed remorse for the situation.

“I have called this meeting because this problem affects all of us,” he said to some 150 of the company’s 260 staff. “We were all witness to what happened on the 20 of July…but what happened on the 20 of July was just a symptom of the problems we are facing.”

The date Chikadya referenced was initially reserved for peaceful demonstrations aimed at government inaction on foreign reserve shortages and fuel scarcity. But the people’s anger boiled over and by nightfall, riots met with police brutality left 19 dead and scores more injured.

And so, yesterday, BP&P’s editors, reporters, salespeople, and everybody else that a publishing house requires to function, were told that financial hardships matched by the government’s mismanagement of the economyhad reached their doorstep.

“We are all aware of the acute shortage of forex,” Chikadya explained, referring to the country’s dwindling foreign currency reserves. Requests for loans from Malawi’s cash-strapped banks had been denied and negotiations with BP&P’s paper supplier had hit a wall. If action was not taken, Chikadya continued, BP&P would no longer have the capacity to pay for the broadsheet on which it prints Malawi’s news.

Throughout the rest of the day, envelopes circulated as reporters manned their desks until the last of their stories were filed. Even those who knew they were on their way out remained loyal.

“Don’t show it to me,” one was heard as a letter was dropped on his desk. “I will file my article and be gone by the end of the day.”

The morning of Aug. 31, those who remained spoke with nervous optimism. “We live to fight another day,” one BP&P reporter said.

I’m sure the mood over in the newsroom at MBC was similar.

Malawi’s economy is struggling badly. On Aug. 31, two of the country’s biggest media houses felt the weight of these hard times. And 326 of their employees carried it home.

08/22/2011

Seated on the porch of her state residence in Blantyre, Malawi’s first female Vice President, Joyce Banda, wraps a thick, white shawl around her shoulders and clasps her hands together, indicating that she’s ready to be interviewed.

There is a calmness about Mudi State Residence, with its towering trees and extensive gardens. In such a setting, it is difficult to imagine the starkly different atmosphere that engulfed Malawi’s commercial capital just one month ago.

On July 20, nationwide pro-democracy demonstrations against economic and administrative mismanagement took place, but it wasn’t long before these organized marches disintegrated into chaos and the country erupted into two days of rioting, widespread looting, and violent clashes between police and civilians.

The use of lethal force by police resulted in 19 deaths, dozens of injuries, and more than 500 arrests.

“Where Malawi is at [right now] is as a result of two or three years of frustration and pain and trying to reason with government – and government refusing to listen” Banda says.

Vice President, Joyce Banda. Photo by Katie Lin.

Long plagued by fuel, electricity, water, and foreign-exchange shortages, Malawians presented President Bingu wa Mutharika and his administration with a 20-point petition on the day of the demonstrations. A dialogue between civil society organizers and the government to discuss the petition is scheduled for Sept. 17.

While Banda hopes this dialogue will yield viable solutions, she explains that the root of these problems lies within the political agenda of the ruling Democratic People’s Party (DPP).

“The President wants his brother to take over from him,” Banda explains of the cause for tensions within the DPP.“And that’s where [the problems] start from.”

In December 2010, the Vice President was expelled from the DPP for her stance against this unconstitutional succession process – and her strained relationship with Mutharika, her honourary “father” and mentor, only appears to be worsening.

Just two days after the protests, Mutharika threatened to arrest numerous political and civil society leaders – including Banda and leader of the opposition, John Tembo – accusing them of organizing the July 20 demonstrations to topple his administration.

Despite having been openly critical of the President’s constitutional breaches, Banda insists she did not organize or participate in the demonstrations.

“I called upon those that were going to exercise that right to march to march peacefully and not to destroy property. I asked the police to protect lives on the road. I also asked the leadership of this country to discuss matters that affect Malawians and resolve any problems peacefully.”

For Banda, Mutharika’s accusations are unwarranted.

“When I hear my name, top on the list of those who are wanted, to be persecuted or to be killed or to be smoked out ... I’m surprised,” she explains, “because I don’t know what crime I have committed.”

“But if the crime is that I stood by Malawians when they suffered, when they protested, when they were not happy, then I am ready to be persecuted.”

Most recently, the People’s Party (PP), a political party formed by Banda and her supporters, officially registered and claims to have already gathered more than 1 million members, further strengthening speculation she is a strong presidential candidate for the 2014 national elections.

“Joyce Banda is a shrewd politician, both in terms of organizing and in terms of making an appeal when she speaks,” says political analyst Blessings Chisinga. “So when you look at the potential contenders for the 2014 elections, she is clearly a frontrunner.”

He explains that the emerging PP may offer a fresh and credible alternative for Malawians in the 2014 elections, as disillusionment towards the DPP grows and opposition parties enter a state of flux.

“Malawians are fed up and are very keen to welcome a new brand of politics.”

08/12/2011

Longtime activist Emmie Chanika sits in front of her struggling NGO's new office. Like many groups in Malawi, financial constraints have pushed the group near to its breaking point. Photo by Travis Lupick.

By Travis Lupick

Considering I was interviewing Emmie Chanika to learn about the financial hardships her NGO is experiencing, we couldn’t have met at a more appropriate time.

I found Chanika working in the rain outside of her old office in downtown Blantyre. The executive director for the Civil Liberties Committee (CILIC) had already loaded a truck with office equipment and files and was making final preparations for a move to a –shall we say– cozier space.

Running behind schedule, I jumped into the truck with Chanika and a couple of her colleagues and proceeded with my interview on the bumpy ride out to CILIC’s new headquarters in Mbayani, a neighbourhood just outside of the city’s Central Business District.

“Oh, you’re Canadian,” Chanika said. “You know, it’s a Canadian that is giving us this space for our office.”

I hadn’t known that.

Upon being contacted, my fellow countryman declined to allow for his name to appear in the media. But he made clear he felt that CILIC is an organization worth supporting.

“It is led by a very dynamic person,” he explained. “Over the years, Emmie Chanika has fought for many causes and not restricted her work to one segment of society. Black or white, she has been helping out everybody. She has given a lot of personal sacrifice.”

Back in the pickup truck, Chanika lamented that her Canadian friend’s organization is one of the few supporters CILIC has left. In Malawi, times are tough for NGOs.

“As an activist, my wings have been clipped,” Chanika said. “Civil Liberties Committee has been undermined by donors, government, and civil society. And because of that, we haven’t had funding for almost two years, going into the third year.”

It’s like there is a perfect storm working against NGO funding in Malawi, she explained to me. There is unnecessary competition for funds among nonprofits working in the country. Malawi’s economy is in a tailspin and chronic fuel shortages have resulted in soaring commodity prices.

And President Bingu wa Mutharika’s increasingly-autocratic leadership style has sent international donors running.

“Our organization’s funding problems began before Mutharika,” Chanika noted. “Our problems started with NGO-infighting and needless competition. And then Mutharika was able to come and take advantage of a situation already deteriorating.”

CILIC was formed in 1992, making it one of the oldest human rights organizations in the country. Not only was it was at the front of Malawi’s first marches for women’s rights in the late 1990s, but Chanika was also one of the founding members of the Human Rights Consultative Committee, an umbrella organization largely responsible for organizing the July 20, 2011 nationwide demonstrations against poor governance and economic mismanagement.

But today, CILIC is all but defunct, Chanika sighed. She and her employees still show up for work everyday, but increasingly, they are having to empty their own pockets to continue working.

“My husband, he asks, ‘Why don’t you just leave them?’” she recounted. “And I ask my husband, ‘What then would I do with my energies?’”

Africa Without Maps

There's so much more to Africa than predictable headlines about war, famine and AIDS. From Ghanaian beauty pageants to music in Malawi, Africa Without Maps provides a rare glimpse of life in Africa from Journalists for Human Rights interns on the ground.

Funding for the jhr bloggers is provided by the Government of Canada's Youth International Internship Program.

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